To a degree, the basic ingredients of the score for Earthquake are identical to those of the immediately succeeding The Towering Inferno, the orchestrations also largely the same. A roughly 60-member orchestra is augmented by the composer's usual pop ensemble that lends similar contemporary tones to both The Towering Inferno and The Eiger Sanction amongst the more stoic orchestral elements. While Williams suggests early on that woodwinds may be a representation of the shifting earth itself, he never really runs with that idea after teasing it with the help of some electronic effects in "A Crack in the Dam." Instead, that effect extends to "Jammed Door and the Death of Jody" in largely a simple reprise. Meanwhile the societal depravity is given a rambling piano motif in the bass along with almost primal percussion in "Refugees and Looters" and a few moments thereafter. The duo of "The Tunnel" and "Washed Away" is orchestrally underwhelming, though the latter does intelligently convey the two most major themes in the work. Williams' choice to divide out the thematic attributions in Earthquake between the various character sets was a major error that causes the score lose all cohesion. It's a score that really demanded one overarching identity that could be applied for both the illustrious early scenes of bustling city life and later the deconstructed adversity to follow. Williams does actually write such a theme and convey it prominently over "Main Title." It's a fairly decent Williams idea, one that would in its first half experience an adaptation into The Towering Inferno and, in its final bars, strongly suggest the composer's Krypton theme for Superman. He explicitly meant for this idea to represent Los Angeles, but it largely disappears after its primary statement up front, only tangentially occupying a scant number of cues before the finale. It offers structural hints to "Motordrome/Miles on Wheels," "Aftermath" (very barely on chimes), and with fragmented panic in "Washed Away." The idea is also only barely touched upon in "Earthquake - End Titles," stewing at the outset of that cue but then developing into a somewhat differently harmonized set of similar progressions, suggesting the transformation of the city. When Williams went back to rearrange his score for the album release, he greatly expanded the scope of this main theme, turning it into an elegant piano-led piece in "City Theme" and including a rejected version of the closing cue as "The City Sleeps" while also conveying the more mysterious take on the same idea in "Finale, End Title."

The most prominent secondary identity in Earthquake exists as the love theme for Heston's lead and his mistress. This idea is a standard, flowery romantic expression for Williams during this era, rather light on substance but nevertheless quite pleasant. In the score proper, it's mostly confined to "Stewart and Denise (Love Scene)" and then supplied one moment of fateful realization near the start of "Washed Away" when death quickly ends that affair. This idea is given its own concert arrangement as "Love Theme" for the album, though it's largely redundant with "Love Scene." The other motifs that Williams self-identifies as "themes" are one-off ideas tracked into scenes with certain characters as appropriate. The motorcycle storyline is summarized in "Miles on Wheels" in the film and on album, and the two renditions are significantly different, the album version infusing the main theme impressively into the action. Beware the wretched 1970's stylings in both, however. With a touch of Latin flare is the effortless keyboard over shaker and bass in "Something for Rosa," and this instance is a rare one in which the film version has more instrumental spirit than the album rearrangement. Tacking off in the 1950's Henry Mancini direction is the theme for the lead's hapless wife in "Lunch with Remy," a flugelhorn taking the performance with piano in the much different "Something for Remy" version for the album. More coherent in the score is the dark motif established for the troubled national guard character in "Jody's Trophies," electric harpsichord performing a simple, menacingly ascending motif over the tribal percussion for society's demise. This motif recurs in "Jody Loses Control" and "Jammed Door and the Death of Jody" to wrap up that character arc with a nearly Western-like flavor. All these motifs, however, never come together to form an adequate narrative in Earthquake, the film version of the score completely aimless. By expanding the main city theme and love theme for the album recording, the work sounds far more cohesive than it actually was in the picture. The album version had been available for decades in a few variants that included degrees of sound effects and sometimes omitted "Something for Remy" to feature even more such effects. The effects aren't anything special nowadays given their archival sound, but they are somewhat cool in "Main Title." The outstanding 2019 expansion on album by La-La Land Records fits both the film and album versions on one CD with three alternate takes at the end, including a true stereo mix of the film's "Main Title" whereas the rest of that presentation is mono-derived. After the shaking stopped, the album version of Earthquake remained much superior to the thematically wayward version heard in the film.   @Amazon.com: CD or Download